Editor's note: Tatiana Barakshina is a co-founder and a managing partner of research firm Bazis, with offices in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and Naperville, Ill. The author wishes to thank the Bazis health team for contributing to this piece: Dinara Akhmatdinova, Anna Shevalova, Katharina Gancarczyk, Anastasia Leonteva, Marina Petrunya and Evgeniya Zaburunova.
Medicine is one of those continuously evolving fields. As researchers, one of the joys of doing what we do is to observe the industry developments and trends, to be in the midst of advancement, evaluating and studying how we provide care for people in need.
We see it from several vantage points: from our office in the Chicago area but also from our headquarters in Ekaterinburg, Russia, where we do most of our fieldwork in this space.
I’ve noticed a handful of hot trends in medicine being actively discussed in the United States. Given where we conduct our research, I wanted to answer the question: What is the view and status of these trends in Russia and Ukraine or Kazakhstan – countries which are geographically, culturally and linguistically connected?
In this article, we’ll explore some of those trends across Russia and the region: telemedicine, electronic health records (EHR), natural language processing (NLP), online customer reviews and the quantified self (wearables).
While telemedicine has gained popularity within the U.S. health care system only recently, the idea of doctors using this type of communication to consult with patients has essentially been around since the invention of the telephone in the 1870s.
In 1925, Hugo Gernsback, a radio and publishing leader, predicted physicians would use the radio and TV to communicate with physicians (this may have been in part wishful thinking on his end given the industry he was in). In any event, as early as 1960, physicians were connecting with patients via closed-circuit telev...